Look and Find Your Muse.

This is the first entry into my first beauty blog, where I will funnel all of my professional experience as a hair stylist and makeup artist and as a consumer of innumerable hair and cosmetic tools and products as well as what inspires me. This blog is for my lovely clients, my friends, my family, and for my new followers: including you. Do you have a burning question that you’d like to ask me? Please do! Ask me anything about products, how to get a look, colors, styles… Throw it at me!

A self-makeover, in front of my painting.

If you don’t know me, this is me above.

I did my hair and makeup, as well as the painting you see me in front of. Beauty is an art every bit as much as fine art. Both are artifice, both can express an inner reality and project a facet of oneself.

I’ve told some of my clients that they should find (or probably already have) a muse. Someone (not necessarily famous) whose look, attitude, and/or lifestyle inspires them. You can have more than one. Mine include Dita Von Teese, Gwen Stefani, and Natalie Portman (esp. as Amadala). Integrate what you admire about them into your look.

As I mentioned, Dita Von Teese is a burlesque dancer who always inspires me. She has said in several interviews that it’s the self-created beauty that is glamorous… the transformation into something other. Here’s a quote from Interview magazine:

SP: It’s stronger for me as well. [both laugh] One of the things that was so appealing to me when Interview asked me to do this was that they suggested the conversation be around beauty and the return of glamour. And I was like, well Dita is all of those things!

DVT: Oh, I try to be. I love glamour and artificial beauty. I love the idea of artifice and dressing up and makeup and hair.